smash-pacifism-zine

Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, 1957
In January, 1957, the SCLC was established during
a regional meeting organized by the pacifist Fellowship of
Reconciliation (FOR). With some 150 delegates from the
South, the SCLC's initial mandate was to spread the use of
nonviolent resistance against segregation, focusing on
desegregating buses. King was elected president (and
would remain so until his death in 1968).
Originally titled the Southern Leadership
Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration,
it added 'Christian' at another meeting
a few months later. The decision was
made by the mostly Baptist ministers
that formed its board, and was
rationalized as a means of countering
accusations of communism and
radicalism (as the NAACP had been
subjected to by critics). It also
adopted the slogan “To Redeem the
Soul of America.”
Many of the board and staff
members of the SCLC were also
members of the NAACP. The SCLC
was established to avoid direct public
association with the NAACP. Despite
its staunch reformism and hostility to
direct action, the NAACP was
tarnished constantly by right-wing
opponents as a 'subversive' radical
organization. In Alabama, the group had been declared
illegal.
The SCLC also avoided competing with the
NAACP by not being a membership organization; the
SCLC was set up with affiliate groups, mostly churches as
well as civic associations. New church coalitions emerged
as affiliated groups, including the Alabama Christian
Movement for Human Rights, and others.
From the start, however, the NAACP was wary of
the SCLC and its competition for funds, support and
influence. The leadership of the SCLC and its affiliates
were primarily Black middle-class professionals. The
network would remain mostly urban until the early 1960s,
when voter registration campaigns began to extend its
network into rural areas. Although it organized support
groups in the North, the SCLC was never able to organize
successfully outside of the South (as its failed attempts in
1966 would show).
By 1957, King's reputation as a civil rights leader
was being reinforced through high profile events and
official government sanction. In February of that year, he
was featured on the cover of Time magazine. In May, a
“Prayer Pilgrimage” was organized in Washington, DC,
where King addressed a rally of some 25,000. The protest
Coretta Scott and MLK in India, 1959.
41
was the result of a demand from the SCLC for a
government meeting to discuss desegregation of schools in
the South. A month later, King held a two-hour long
meeting with vice-president Richard Nixon. A year later, he
would meet with President Eisenhower.
In 1957, the SCLC also began focusing on voter
registration. The campaign, dubbed “Crusade for
Citizenship,” was officially launched on February 12, 1958,
when the SCLC organized protests in twenty cities.
Despite the success of the Montgomery boycott,
the rising public profile of King, and the beginning of the
voter registration campaign, the SCLC was in decline
through 1958-59 and would be little more than a “marginal
bystander” in the mass movement
that would arise in 1960-61.
In 1959, King and his
wife, with assistance from Quaker
groups, made a month-long tour of
India where they studied Gandhi's
methods. That year, a reorganization
of the SCLC took place. James
Lawson, a member of the Fellowship
for Reconciliation and a strong
advocate of Gandhian pacifism, was
brought in to conduct training on
nonviolent protest. Nevertheless, the
SCLC achieved little success in
organizing a mass movement, its
proposals for desegregation
campaigns targeting other public
spaces, such as theatres, motels,
restaurants, etc., did not catch on. Its funding, based largely
on church donations, was also in decline. In 1960, King
and Coretta moved to Atlanta, which became the SCLC's
headquarters.
School Desegregation, 1957
While the Montgomery bus boycott ended in
desegregation, and as the SCLC was being established,
campaigns were also underway to desegregate public
schools in the South. In September 1957, the Arkansas state
governor deployed National Guard troops to prevent nine
Black students from entering Little Rock Central High
School. In response, President Eisenhower federalized the
Arkansas National Guard and deployed units of the 101st
Airborne to impose desegregation.
On September 9, 1957, the US government passed
a civil rights act creating the Civil Rights Commission
along with a Civil Rights Division within the Department
of Justice.
Student Sit-In Movement, 1960
While bus boycotts were occurring in Montgomery